The Park That Pays for Its Own Expansion

Piney River Resort started as 45 RV spaces. The owner wanted more — more sites, more revenue, more of the year booked — and the bank that financed the growth was CCFBank, whose campground banker Chad Larson worked the deal. The park came out the other side with about 150 RV spaces, plus glamping tents and tiny homes, a store, and a pool. North Camp Properties tells the same story at a different scale: a 40-site park that grew to 135 sites and is now six resorts, financed with CCFBank's Josh Villella. Neither park was bought and flipped. Both were bought, expanded, and held — and the expansion is what paid for the loan.

The reason expansion pays is that a campground sells nights, and a glamping tent sells a night for several times what a gravel pad sells it for. KOA's 2026 Camping & Outdoor Hospitality Report puts glamping at 29 percent of all camping in 2025 — more than 15 million households went glamping in the year — and 54 percent of active campers plan to glamp in 2026. Nearly a third of new campers, 31 percent, already classify themselves as glampers. The average camper spent over $200 a day per person in 2025, excluding accommodations, which means the guest who arrives without an RV is often the guest who spends the most once they are there. A tent with a real bed, a cabin with a bathroom, a tiny home with a kitchen: these are not decorations on a campground. They are the highest-rate rooms in it.

The arithmetic of an expansion is the arithmetic of the whole deal, run one more time. ParkVestor's median price per site is $55,000, and typical RV park capitalization rates run 8 to 12 percent. A park that adds ten glamping units at a nightly rate two or three times the pad rate adds revenue at a much higher margin than a park that adds ten pads, because the tent costs a fraction of what a new pad, hookup, and road costs. The financing for that work comes from the same shelf as the acquisition loan: an SBA 7(a) loan for working capital and equipment, a 504 loan for the fixed assets, a conventional term loan of $50,000 to several million over 3 to 10 years, or a CCFBank-style loan of $3 million to $10 million at up to 70 percent for a larger build-out. CCFBank's own portfolio shows what careful expansion lending looks like: $151 million outstanding across 70 loans, an average loan size of $2.2 million, a weighted average loan-to-value of 48 percent, and zero net charge-offs and zero criticized loans as of March 31, 2026.

There is a second reason expansion pays, and it has nothing to do with tents. A park that only sells pads is a seasonal business with a short booking window. A park that adds cabins and glamping sells to the guest who does not own an RV — a much larger pool than the 8.1 million households that do — and it sells to them in the shoulder seasons, when the RV pads sit empty and the tents, with heat and real beds, do not. The Dyrt reported that 56.1 percent of campers had difficulty booking a site in 2024 because campgrounds were full. The parks that were full were the ones with something to sell beyond a patch of gravel. The expansion does not just add revenue. It adds the kind of revenue that arrives when the pads are empty.

The counterargument is that glamping is capital spending, and capital spending can strand. A tent is cheaper than a pad, but ten tents, a bathhouse, and a booking system still cost real money, and they earn nothing in January in a northern park. Zoning is the quiet constraint: not every county will permit cabins or tiny homes on campground land, and the permit fight can take longer than the build. The 2026 slowdown in RV shipments — down 13.9 percent through July — is a reminder that the whole outdoor market breathes with the economy, and an expansion financed at the top of a cycle is an expansion that has to survive the bottom of one. The parks that expanded well, Piney River and North Camp among them, expanded from occupancy that was already proven, not from a forecast. The tent went where the waiting list already was.

For the lender, that is the underwriting rule in one sentence: finance the expansion the waiting list justifies, not the one the brochure promises. The parks that follow it repay their loans faster, because a glamping unit that is booked from April to October services debt in a way a speculative pad never does. And the lender who finances those expansions needs to be found by the operator who is deciding, right now, whether to add ten tents or ten pads. The operator searches for the words "campground finance." The name that answers is the one that states the product exactly.

Sources: CCFBank, Outdoor Hospitality Lending — case studies: Piney River Resort (45 to about 150 RV spaces, glamping, tiny homes; banker Chad Larson, VP Commercial Banking & Campground Lending) and North Camp Properties (40-site park to 135 sites, now six resorts; banker Josh Villella); campground loan portfolio $151 million outstanding, 70 loans, average loan size $2.2 million, weighted average LTV 48%, 0.00% net charge-offs, 0.00% criticized (as of March 31, 2026); loans $3 million–$10 million, up to 70%, https://ccf.us/business/outdoor-hospitality-lending/. KOA, 2026 Camping & Outdoor Hospitality Report — glamping 29% of all camping in 2025, more than 15 million households went glamping, 54% of active campers plan to glamp in 2026, 31% of new campers classify as glampers, average daily expenditure per person over $200 in 2025 excluding accommodations, https://www.koapressroom.com/press/2026-camping-hospitality-report/. ParkVestor, "RV Park Financing: SBA, Bank and Seller Loans" — median price per site $55,000 (141 listings), cap rates typically 8–12%, data updated November 8, 2026, https://www.parkvestor.com/financing/rv-parks. Crestmont Capital, "RV Park Business Loans" — SBA 7(a) up to $5 million, terms to 25 years; conventional term loans $50,000 to several million, 3–10 years; alternative funds in 24–72 hours after approval, https://crestmontcapital.com/blog/rv-park-business-loans. The Dyrt, 2024 camping report (via Wert-Berater, "Glamping Resort Feasibility Studies") — 56.1% of campers had difficulty booking a site in 2024 because campgrounds were full, https://www.wert-berater.com/blog/national-glamping-resort-feasibility-study.html. RV Industry Association — 8.1 million U.S. households own an RV; wholesale shipments through July 2026 down 13.9% year over year, https://www.rvia.org/reports-trends/rv-shipment-reports/2025-12/rv-shipments-end-2025-342220-units-modest-25-growth-over-2024.